In recent years determinants of students’ achievement has received much attention. Empirical studies
have found that students’ characteristics, family background, school attended, and regional residence are
major factors affecting student performance. In this paper, we analyze the 2009 OECD-PISA (spell PISA)
survey to examine individual background characteristics influencing the reading achievement of Italian
15 years-old students using the quantile regression (QR) approach. The QR approach allows researchers
to analyze changes in size and direction of predictor estimates on student performance across the entire
distribution of reading achievement scores. Results indicate significant effects of predictors on reading
achievement operating differently across quantiles, suggesting different pathways to achievement for
low and high performing readers. In particular, some family background predictors (parental education,
computer availability at home, and availability of a desk for homework at home), the school program
attended and, the region of student residence play important but differing role for low and high
performing readers. For example, parental education shows a positive effect on student reading,
academic (general) programs perform better than vocational or technical, and Northern regions perform
better than Center-Southern ones, with differentiated effects along the distribution of students’ reading
scores. These findings should be carefully considered by policymakers when outlining strategies to
enhance student performance at all levels along the reading continuum of low and high scores.